


Besties

by KonohanaShuffle



Category: Guild Wars 2 (Video Game)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-23
Updated: 2020-07-23
Packaged: 2021-03-05 04:47:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25458784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KonohanaShuffle/pseuds/KonohanaShuffle
Summary: Once upon a time, I played Guild Wars 2. Luckily, you probably won't have had to play the game to follow the story. It's about how my engineer (Naquela) met her best friend in the whole wide world (Niamh), another player's character.
Kudos: 3





	Besties

The first time they meet, Naquela's inside the engine compartment of a charr war machine. The thing's been whining like a colicky baby, and she's sure she hears it hiccup every time they start it up. Her boss doesn't quite fit inside -- smaller frame and nimble fingers, two things he's taken advantage of since the human came to work for him.

_Demanded_ to work for him. And the treaty meant he couldn't tell her no. At least not by the usual method. (Disemboweling.) 

He still told her no. About fifteen times.

"'Quela!" His voice is a growling bark that bounces over the rim of the compartment.

"Half a sec," she says, voice muffled, echoing, and she snaps a slender piece of metal into place before heaving herself into view.

The first time they meet, Naquela's covered in grease and oil, and her hair's slicked against her head with sweat and grime.

The person her boss wants her to meet is a hulking char with thick, curving horns and a brutally scarred snout, but he's not the one who catches her attention. The charr female -- she can tell boys from girls at a glance these days -- is practically in his shadow, kind of runty and lean but no less powerful, and all four of her ears are canted forward in astonishment, fur bristling the barest bit.

She's also staring directly at Naquela.

Naquela smiles, though, a quick baring of her teeth, and turns to her boss, responding to potential aggression the way she's learned works best -- lack of fear.

"So," she says, swiping her sleeve across her forehead. "Who's the itty bitty kitty?"

\--

Niamh _doesn't like her_. 

She carries herself with a casual arrogance, smug, pointed, as if daring Niamh to do something about her. An arrogance she's seen more than enough of in her charr brethren, where she found it equally insufferable. It tickles the back of her mind (briefly) that the charr might be where she picked it up.

But if she gets one more lifted eyebrow aimed in her direction, she may take the human up on that dare.

Even so, it's clear enough the the crew, top to tail, respects her -- she’s part of their team, from work to banter.

“So what’s with the human?” she asks the foreman the first day she’s there. Neutral. Casual. It's not like she _cares_.

The foreman gives a rolling snort, and her ears prick forward.

"Wouldn't have thought it when I first saw her," he says, and his lips peel barely back in what passes for a smile on a charr muzzle. "Nearly called someone to remove her after the fifth time she showed up asking for a job."

He pauses, gives a roaring laugh. "A _job_. Ink on the treaty's barely dry and this human's asking for a job."

Something flickers in her expression -- she can feel it, and so can he, because his expression sobers and his gaze turns cool.

"She's an asset to the team. More than I could've anticipated. Knows these machines as well as we do." He cocks an eyebrow. "We know she'll have our back -- well, best as she can -- and she knows we'll all have hers."

The message is plain enough.

Don't mess with the human.

Niamh's ears perk that little bit more, all innocence. "I only wondered what brought her here," she says. "Why she chose Iron Legion engineering over, well, her own."

"Because we're the best!" Another barking laugh, but a short one. "Says she learned all she could from the human side of things, wants to know more." He shrugs. "If there's more to the story, she ain't said."

Someone calls out from beyond him, and he grunts, glancing over his shoulder. Niamh inclines her head, tail giving a little swish.

She's gone before he can dismiss her.

\--

She hadn't anticipated they'd be working together. If she had, maybe a bald insult wouldn't have been the way she started.

Too late now.

Niamh isn't quite hostile, though Naquela's caught the barest bristle of fur each time she wandered past. Mostly without acknowledging her. Or looking at her. More like she's pretending Naquela doesn't exist.

That's _weird_. Especially for a charr. 

She lets it go. It's all she can do, frankly, and right at the moment, she simply doesn't care enough. Things get busy right after Niamh arrives -- along with a contingent from another legion. And some very bad news.

Flame Legion.

Marching orders.

Naquela doesn't pay too much attention to the details.

"I am not a _soldier_ ," she hisses for what has to be the fiftieth time, and her boss ignores her. 

He's been ignoring her for a week, after all. Why change that now?

"I'd be worthless in a fight!" 

She flings down an armful of scrap on the pile to be melted down and follows his long, loping strides away from the forges.

"This isn't what I signed on for!"

He finally turns, pulling himself to his full, towering height, and fixes her with a stare, measured and cold. 

"You swore an oath," he says, and all the fight goes out of her at once. "The very oath sworn by our soldiers."

Heat trickles into her cheeks, shame into her throat. She lowers her eyes.

"Said you'd show us how much a human could be worth to us." His lips peel back from his teeth. 

Big teeth. Maybe not as sharp as they could be, but sharp enough. Her head ducks lower, but his paw catches her chin, forces her gaze up to his.

"Just remember, 'Quela," he says, " _that's_ what you're doing."

Her throat drums once against the pressure of his finger.

"Yes, sir," she says.

He huffs out a snort and releases her, turning away. "Besides, we're not going to be on the front lines. They are." 

He jerks his chin toward the armored charr slouched lazily against one of the great machines, rough laughter and casual ferocity. 

She shakes her head, swipes her hand back through her hair.

Gets back to work.

\--

They do it when they think she can’t see them -- or maybe they know she can -- but the battalion’s taking bets now.

Bets on when she’ll snap, in general. 

Bets on when she’ll snap the human’s neck, in particular.

Niamh’s used to that. Sort of used to it. But she’s treading thin ice, now, and every traded glance -- every tink of coin -- sends a prickling ripple through her fur.

She takes to solitary work -- more, even, than usual -- and pretends. Pretends the coins are about rolling dice. Pretends the hushed conversation is about the weather. Pretends the human isn’t there.

Because she’ll be _damned_ if the bastards make a single copper off her.

\--

They're two days from shipping out, and Naquela's guts are in a knot she's afraid she'll never unravel, but just as she's about to pitch her tools across the yard and call it done for the day, the workshop gets a visitor.

She's nearly as hulking as the boss, pale-furred and dark-striped like him. There's a hint of him around the eyes and muzzle, as well -- no surprise. She's his sister.

No one challenges her as she crosses the yard -- they know her, they even wave. The only ones who give her the eye are the guests, and she's just as blithe in ignoring them as she is in acknowledging the others.

Naquela's swinging down from a tank when she bounds up behind and scoops her the rest of the way to the ground.

"Guess who!"

The human shrieks and flails -- her tormentor gets a fist to the snout for her trouble -- but a rumbling chuckle is all that answers her.

" _Anqara_ \--"

"Ooh, very good," the charr says, ruffling her hair.

"Now I know you're trying to give me a heart attack."

Naquela straightens out of her grip, straightening her shirt and trying to make some sense out of the mop Anqara's hair-ruffling left her.

"Oh, _never_ , not my favorite human."

The human grins over her shoulder, giving up the hair as a lost cause. "Also the only human you've spent more than five minutes talking to, right?"

Anqara trills at her, ears twitching with amusement, and follows her out of the shadow of the tank. She blinks in the light and gives a luxurious stretch, as though she hadn't just crossed through it moments ago.

"That," she remarks, "is a thing that's going to change -- and soon."

"Oh yeah?" Naquela cocks an eyebrow. "Canton gotten too boring for you?"

"Ages ago." Her tail switches. "Time to stretch my legs, I think."

A snort answers her. Anqara has done nothing _but_ stretch her legs for the past seven years.

Anqara is a gladium. Lost her warband -- Naquela never asked how, and Anqara never volunteered the information -- and despite that general disgrace, she's happy enough.

"Never really suited for the legions," is her brother's only comment on the matter.

Naquela doesn't even notice Niamh step into view, let alone her suddenly arrested footsteps. Her ears are at alert, her tail utterly still.

"I'll be traveling with the priory," Anqara says airily. "Out _side_ the realms of civilization."

"So not that far."

The charr's whiskers perk, and she smacks her tail against the human's leg. "What a thing to say about our very, _very_ civilized society." She sobers almost immediately, though, cocking her head. "I'm here to tell Ruger" -- that's the boss -- "that I'll be out of pocket for a while."

"Aw, he oughta be used to that." Naquela taps a loose-fisted punch against the charr's bicep and is rewarded with the faintest curving of her feline lips.

"I hope." Her ears flick toward the offices. "I know he worries."

"Everybody worries," Naquela says. Her small hand closes around the furred curve of Anqara's massive paw. "He wants you to be happy. So be happy, all right?"

Anqara trills, envelops her hand in a probably-too-enthusiastic squeeze, and bends to nuzzle her dry nose against Naquela's cheek, following the gesture with an enthusiastic rub of her own. 

Affectionate. Familial.

And this time, Naquela does catch sight of Niamh. The charr is staring at them, an expression twitching, fleeting, across her features. She almost doesn't recognize it. Doesn't spend enough time around the hulking cats when they're deep in their cups. (Too rowdy.)

Niamh looks, for that split second, like she's about to be violently ill.

Then Anqara pulls away, off to find her brother, and in that moment of distraction, Niamh disappears.

\--

Naquela does find her later, slouched near the barracks where their Blood Legion guests are sleeping.

"Hey," she says, and the charr stares at her.

Like she can't believe this human is talking to her. Stares. 

The corner of her lip twitches.

_In for a penny_ , Naquela thinks, and plunges on.

"Listen, I know we kind of got off on the wrong foot," she says. "And that was my fault."

It would honestly be less intimidating if Niamh growled at her. Bristled. Snorted. Something. 

"I just wanted to apologize," she says, and she offers her hand. She hopes it doesn't get bitten off.

It doesn't, but the result isn't much better.

Niamh's eyes flick from her face to her hand. Back again. She straightens away from the wall, turns, and walks away. Controlled steps. Measured. One after the other.

It's a full thirty seconds before Naquela's hand drops. Another minute after that before she retreats to her side of the yard.

\--

The journey's not exactly short. 

Niamh spends it marching. Eating. Sleeping. Marching again. She doesn't see hide or hair of the human, and that's good. That's perfect. 

Everything rankles.

Naquela can't march it -- her legs aren't up to the pace of a battalion of charr. She spends most of her time perched on one of the war machines.

Not only is it boring, it leaves her with too much time to think about what's coming.

Neither of them has much to do but watch the rocky plains transform slowly into a blasted wasteland.

\--

It's been three days since the joint mission arrived at the front -- roughly at the front. This particular pack of engineers, technicians and machinists has been relegated to support, which leaves the actual fighting only a distant dream.

Three days, and the engineers have worked at a feverish pace, repairing, refitting, sometimes rebuilding.

Three days, and the soldiers have had nothing to do but watch.

Niamh wakes in the night, and she isn't sure why.

The air smells funny. It tickles her throat. 

The alarms start bawling just as she realizes why that is.

Smoke. 

She flings herself off her bunk, roaring after her equipment. No time for armor. No time for thought. She's at the door with blade in hand, the other sleepers not far behind her. 

It opens to fire and chaos.

The whole enclosure’s flickering with light, hungry tongues of it lapping at everything that can burn. Shadows dart in and out of view, blades and fangs and bloody eyes flashing into clarity for no longer than it takes to blink.

Flame Legion.

Flame Legion _inside_.

Niamh sprints after the first she sees, puzzling through the _how_ and the _why_ , though the why’s easy. 

They’re Flame Legion.

She brings her blade down into the traitor and it crunches through bone and armor alike. He goes down with a gurgling snarl. There was a time she might have worried about getting her sword irretrievably stuck, but now she only wrenches it free and moves on to the next, gaze darting here, then there.

“Where are the guards?” she barks at one of her fellows, and he gives a rippling shrug.

“Dead, burned.” He rakes claws into the eyes of a lunging legionnaire, then swings his club heavily up into the jaw of another. Bone shatters. "Dunno how they did it." The club swings down again, smashing the enemy charr into the ground. "Not their style."

Not their style.

Something to worry about later.

She lopes into the thickening smoke.

\--

It never stops being a surprise, what they can set on fire.

Glass twists, melts. Ignites. Stone bakes and sears. Muddy earth, treacherously molten, glows at their feet. One of the war machines blazes in the choking haze. Metal screeches. Oil sizzles. Warriors laugh, roar, bellow. Scream.

Three more traitor soldiers bloody Niamh’s sword, but there’s a steady supply -- no end to red armor and fanatical cries.

She’s lost sight of her fellows, though she still notes their voices here and there in the din, and one of those voices shouts a warning she doesn’t quite hear.

Its message becomes evident a moment later when a blazing war machine explodes.

She’s not that close, but the blast still flings her to the ground, cracking her head against hot earth. Something sears across her back -- a twisted hunk of metal strikes the ground a few feet away -- and something else lodges, hot and heavy, in her shoulder.

A cheer goes up.

Niamh snarls and pushes to her feet -- her head spins, her wounds shriek -- and barrels toward the celebrants.

One swing sends the first to the floor, its backward sweep separating the second's head from his shoulders. The third has just realized what's happening when the blade arcs downward, forcefully cutting short the beginnings of a bellow.

Her shoulder makes no secret it's displeased with the activity -- she nearly drops the blade jerking it free.

She secures her grip, ignoring the trembling, and a shadow stumbles out of the smoke.

Her blade lifts. Her lips peel back. Her muscles bunch, and --

It's the human.

Niamh comes to a screeching halt.

She looks blank, confused. Terrified. Her legs are shaking -- her whole body, more like -- and she stares at Niamh without the barest hint of recognition.

Niamh’s mouth is half open to snarl -- something -- “What the hell are you doing here?” maybe -- but the thought doesn’t have a chance to complete before a gout of fire leaps out of the suffocating haze. 

She moves without thinking, closing the gap between them and checking Naquela bodily out of the way of the blast. She manages to catch the brunt of it on her blade, a dull rasp of stone against metal and a flare of heat announcing the missile’s retreat in another direction.

One shaman she’s sure of handling, but two lope into view, two and their guard, another six Flame Legion soldiers. Her throat is dry, and it’s not only because of heat and smoke.

She swallows. Swallows again. Places herself between the human and the band of charr, sword at the ready.

“Stay behind me,” she snaps.

No response.

She chances a glance in Naquela’s direction and finds the space she occupied empty. The human is gone.

Her lips peel back. She’s not sure why she’s surprised. 

Soldiers bellow, and she whips her head around to see the shamans’ guard charging her. She tells herself she’s faced worse. Lifts her sword. Roars out to meet them.

\--

One guard goes down under the weight of her blade, then two. The third nearly spits her with a spear, then loses the sharp end of it when her teeth splinter its haft like so much kindling. To his credit, he whips it back across her muzzle and nearly takes an eye.

And while she’s dealing with that, the other three converge. Basso chanting signals the shamans are at work. which only means more fire -- and soon.

She dances with the other four, fighting to keep them between her and the shamans. She knows they're maneuvering her, and that's driven home when one of the four bludgeons her from behind.

A sliver of thought is grateful he didn't go for her head, the rest occupied with wishing he hadn't driven his club directly into whatever gored her shoulder.

There's screaming, suddenly, and it takes her a moment to realize it isn't hers.

Naquela is above her -- how did she manage that? -- and hurtling downward with something blunt and heavy in her hands. 

She collides feet-first with the charr behind Niamh. Her weapon -- it's a flamethrower, Niamh notes vaguely -- collides with the muzzle of the charr to her right.

Bone splinters.

Blood sprays.

Naquela whips the flamethrower the other way around with shocking competence and ignites it.

Worship flame they may, but they are certainly not immune to its effects. 

The charr melts underneath the blast. His screaming joins the chorus until it melts as well, bubbling, gurgling.

Niamh's lips peel back. The smell of scorched fur and charred flesh is always vile, but so close it's indescribably ... personal.

A bellow to her left defrosts her limbs, and the bellower loses a limb for drawing her attention. His head follows shortly. She turns to the last guard to find Naquela already there, flamethrower spitting. Niamh's blade smashes into him before he can repeat his comrade's grisly demise.

The chanting crescendos.

Niamh charges.

Naquela is beside her. She finds that fact a little more alarming than she might have five minutes earlier.

It's a handful of paces before they're on the shamans. Niamh makes it first, rams her blade through the fireball building nestled between two heavy paws. His chant cuts off with a wet grunt, flame vanishing from between his fingers.

The second chant stops before she can turn. The second shaman shrieks. 

The second shaman wails. 

The second shaman gurgles and thrashes and dies.

Silence falls, slowly, ash drifting through the still-hazy air. Niamh looks to the human, cautious, but whatever she expects to see, it isn't there.

Naquela is staring. Her eyes are on the shaman's charred and smoking corpse, but Niamh is one hundred percent sure she doesn't actually see it. Her ash-dusted face is streaked with tears and snot, her mouth bent into a grimace around clenched teeth. 

She doesn't make a sound, but Niamh is sure she's screaming.

The muzzle of the flamethrower droops.

Niamh's mouth cracks open, but she doesn't have words to say. Then footsteps, shouting. Her ears go up, and she swears softly.

"More," she says in a low rumble.

Naquela jerks from her reverie. Looks to Niamh. Straightens her shaking knees. 

The flamethrower snaps into position.

\--

"I'm sor -- sorry --" A pause. "I'm sor -- sor --" A hiccuping sound.

Niamh wishes almost desperately that the human would stop trying to talk.

It was almost an hour ago that the footsteps, the shouting finally resolved into the sounds of a support post regrouping, taking stock. 

Niamh's troops have found and accounted for her, leaving with the promise to find the human's superior. She's been stuck on repeat since then, trying over and over to apologize. For what, Niamh's not sure.

The flamethrower's on the ground a few feet away. Naquela dropped it when the fight sagged out of her. Nearly smashed both their feet. The thing's charr-sized anyway. It's a wonder she could heft it to begin with.

But there, finally --

"'Quela!" 

The human jerks, looking.

Ruger Shieldsworn's form materializes out of the thinning smoke around the corner of one of the machines that made it out more or less intact.

He jogs to a halt, the tension in his frame relaxing when he sees the human more or less intact, as well.

"B-boss." A whole word makes it out of her mouth. "Boss, I --"

"You're all right?" he says, one paw reaching toward her until he checks the motion. "Not hurt?"

She shakes her head. "I nuh," she begins, then tries again. Damn it if she's not crying again. "I need a b-bath."

Ruger looks at her. This time his heavy paw does come to rest on the human's head. "Right after we finish putting all the fires out," he says. He looks, in that brief moment, incredibly strained.

"Okay," she says. She doesn't seem to notice his paw still there when she tips her head back. She looks a little dazed, honestly. "I'll ... I'll go help."

"'Quela, you don't --" 

But she's already ducked out from under his paw and shuffled off. He watches her go, frowns, then turns that frown on Niamh. "They hit support posts all down the line. We're not so bad, compared to some."

She lifts a brow, settling into a silent parade rest.

"What happened?" he asks.

She tells him.

His breath drops out in a growling sigh once she's finished. "I was hard on her. I never really wanted ..." He huffs out a rough snort and rolls his eyes toward Niamh. It's half inquiring, but he looks away before she can answer. "Never mind."

He turns and begins to walk back toward his side of the yard.

She almost lets him go, suppresses the ripple of aggravation that runs down her spine.

"Sir!" she calls at last, and he pauses, flicking an ear back toward her. "She ..." Her gaze dashes to one side. "She had my back, sir."

He nods, stumps away. "Go find a medic, Feyblade," he says.

\--

She finds a medic. 

Gets cleaned and bandaged. Gets a shard of metal six inches long removed from her shoulder. Turns out that hammer blow drove it deep and broke a bone or two. The medic is disgusted with her for walking around like this.

It's later, arm in a sling and some of the rest of her swathed in bandages, that she sees Naquela again. 

She's slumped asleep, arms around the half-filled bucket of water in her lap.

Niamh stands there for a frozen moment, debating, but one of the human's fellows gets there first, casting Niamh a quick -- hard, suspicious, warning -- glance before scooping Naquela up and carrying her away.

Niamh snorts. 

She smooths her fur out of an instinctive bristle before she goes on her way.

\--

When Naquela wakes, it's to the feeling of a cool, damp cloth over her forehead, laid there a little inexpertly, perhaps, as it's also covering her eyes. She doesn't peek, though, closing them again and sighing.

Things are a bit of a blur after the fighting ended -- maybe even a little before it ended, actually. Her stomach gives a slow churn. Maybe not enough before. Maybe not enough of a blur. 

She vaguely remembers being put in a bed and told to sleep, which she apparently did. She's not sure how long, but she already wants more.

She's on the cusp when the door creaks, and paws shuffle softly into the room.

Her boss, she guesses.

Her fingers twitch against the rough blankets covering her.

"When," she starts. Stops. Starts over. "When I was little, my house burned down." Her fingers start to beat a slow tattoo against the cloth. "My parents died. My brother, he. Um, he got me out. He died after. From the smoke. And the burns."

The movement she heard stops.

“I … I had dreams about it for years. Used to wake up half the orphanage, um. With the screaming.” She clears her throat. “I guess that’s why they moved me out to a farm.”

Which hadn’t helped _her_ at all, to be honest. A farm burns just as easily as an orphanage in the dreams of a child. She makes to sit up, and the cloth slips from her forehead.

“At least now the nightmares are going to have some new material -- aaah.” 

It’s not her boss standing there, awkwardly, just inside the room. It’s Niamh.

“Um,” she says. “I’m sorry --”

“Don’t,” the charr says quickly, then, “Don’t … worry about it.”

Naquela remembers -- sort of remembers -- a litany of apologies tumbling helpless from her mouth to bloodied earth and stinging smoke. She stops herself from apologizing again.

“Your boss said he’d be here shortly,” Niamh supplies after a moment.

Naquela nods. 

The charr starts to speak once. Her mouth opens, tongue runs over her teeth. Then she closes it. 

Naquela waits.

Niamh squats, arms folding over her knees. Her tail tucks around her feet. She stares at the floor. The wall. Anywhere but Naquela.

“Thank you,” she says at last, “for coming back.”

Naquela stares at her. “Oh,” she says. “Oh. N-nothing, that was --” Her hands lift from the covers, flutter in a gesture wholly inadequate to express her bewilderment, the spike of adrenaline that runs through her at the memory. “I mean. It was --”

Not nothing, never nothing. The fuel of sleepless nights for years and years to come.

“You’re welcome.” A pause. Her hands drop back to her lap. “But I couldn’t … not come back, you know?”

Niamh grunts. She’s still a moment longer, then levers herself to her feet. Looks at Naquela for the first time. Nods.

Naquela echoes the gesture.

Then, with a faint swish of her tail, the charr is gone.

\--

Naquela’s back on her feet before the end of the day, quietly inserting herself into the cleanup crews. The work is nice. Simple. Just heavy enough to keep her from thinking too much.

At the end of it she finds her boss slouched against a wall, looking over their progress.

“Hey, boss,” she says.

He grunts, gaze shifting wearily toward her.

“Teach me how to shoot.”

His brows lift. He cocks his head at her. 

After a slow, considering moment, he nods.

\--

After the seventh time recoil dumps her on her ass, they scrounge up a more human-sized rifle, something they confiscated from a group of separatists and left in a box. (None of them are completely sure how it wound up traveling along with them.) It takes a little cleaning up, but her boss says she needs to learn to do that, too -- and do it regularly.

Her training's a bit of a spectacle at first, but between her steady improvement and a buffer of protective coworkers, she's basically left alone.

She only sees Niamh in the crowd once. It's for one of her less spectacular performances.

Of course it is.

At least, two weeks later, she's hitting the targets more often than not.

Naquela's lingering near the weapon racks after she and her boss have been ushered off by Blood Legion soldiers who actually need to use the makeshift firing range. She watches them at first, noting with wistful envy how much closer their shots get to the vital areas of their targets, but her attention turns to the weapons soon enough.

They're huge, one or two nearly as big as her, but a little hunting turns up a thick blade about the length and breadth of a human sword. Maybe it's another captured weapon. Maybe it's a charr knife.

She gives it an experimental swing. One, then two, then a clumsy thrust. She snorts a laugh at herself.

"You're holding it wrong."

Naquela nearly fumbles the sword to the ground.

"Don't do that," she says, once her grip's secured. "I might've dropped it, you know?" She turns, the blade still in hand, and nearly drops it again. 

The speaker is Niamh, standing a few feet away, looking as if she's not sure why she spoke herself.

"M-might've chopped off my feet," Naquela continues, mouth running heedless of mind. "I need my feet."

Niamh's lip twitches. It half looks like the charr is trying to suppress a smile -- a laugh, maybe -- but Naquela's not willing to bet a lot on that. She clears her throat.

"I was just looking at it."

Niamh inclines her head and shifts her weight, just slightly. Naquela looks at her for a moment, then turns to put the sword back where she found it.

When the charr speaks, it's almost hesitant.

"You're ... learning to shoot."

Naquela peers at her. "Yeah. I'm uh. I'm getting better," she offers, excusing herself, perhaps for the session Niamh witnessed.

The charr watches her for another another moment, all tension, almost concern. "He didn't ..." She shifts again, scowls, but her voice belies the expression, mild and awkward. "He didn't want you in combat, you know."

Naquela's mouth opens, closes again, and her brows knit. 

"Who," she asks finally, "the boss?" She clears her throat and runs a hand back through slightly sweaty hair, stuffing it in her pocket afterward. "Yeah, I know."

The charr's ears perk the slightest bit before forcibly returning to cool neutrality.

Naquela answers the question anyway.

"I just ..." Her gaze skates to the ground. "I don't want to be ... a liability -- again. I don't want anybody -- _anybody_ \-- to get hurt because I ... because I didn't know what I was doing. Because they had to, um, protect me."

Her cheeks stain red, a roiling mixture of embarrassment and nausea rising into her belly, and she looks up to find Niamh's gaze somewhere else. The charr starts to speak, then falls silent, tail working at a slow switch in the dust.

She's silent long enough that Naquela wonders if the conversation's over, but just as she's about to go on her way, the charr speaks, still gazing firmly into space.

"You should pick up some close combat," she says, "while you're at it." Her gaze slowly, unwillingly, meets Naquela's. "You won't always have your gun."

"Oh ..." Dismay joins the busy churn in her stomach, echoed immediately in a flicker of her expression. "I hadn't thought about that. Mmm." She scratches her fingers through her hair again, so busy working over the question of how she's going to work extra combat lessons into her schedule she almost doesn't hear the charr when she speaks again.

"What?" she says blankly.

"I can show you a few things," Niamh repeats, sounding almost as neutral as statistically possible. "I have extra time. In the evenings."

Her tail switches a little harder, slapping the ground. 

Naquela stares at her. Long enough that Niamh rolls her shoulders and looks away again, scowl returning.

"It's fine if you don't, I --"

"No!" Naquela says quickly. Rude, rude, cutting her off like that, but -- "I mean -- sure. That'd be, uh, great. If you really don't mind."

Niamh grunts. Pauses. Turns away. "Tomorrow," she says over her shoulder. "Last hour before slop."

Naquela calls a hurried "okay!" after her, but the charr's retreating fast enough she's not sure she hears.

\--

"'Quela, are you _sure_ about this?"

"Well, yeah," Naquela answers around a mouthful of -- whatever dinner is, she's not terribly sure. She pokes it with a spoon. Mash, she decides. "Why wouldn't I be?"

Her boss gives her a deadpan, steady stare. She attempts to clear her throat and nearly chokes on her food instead. 

"Look, she's not gonna try to kill me," she says once the mash is going down the right tube again. "Probably." She takes another bite and proceeds once again to talk with her mouth full. "If you're so worried just come watch or something."

He rumbles at her, deep into a mouthful of meat, himself. 

"I've got work to do that isn't babysitting you," he says after it's largely swallowed.

\--

He shows up anyway. 

So does most of the crew.

And more than a little handful of Niamh's cohorts.

Niamh does an admirable job pretending they're none of them even there, but Naquela can see her discomfort in the form of soft, quick tail lashes and a backward cant to her ears.

"Maybe next time we should charge admission," she murmurs, and the charr makes a faint rumbling noise in her throat.

Naquela's glad it's not directed at her.

It turns out Niamh's not a gentle teacher, and Naquela goes to her bunk with more bruises than not the first several outings.

She learns, by bristle and twitch, by tightening of the lip, the signs of her mentor's impatience -- it turns out Niamh's not a patient teacher, either. After their third lesson's abrupt end, she watches for them. Maybe Niamh even figures out she's doing it.

When no blood's forthcoming, Niamh's fellows lose interest. Most of Naquela's do, too. Ruger's gone after he figures out she's as safe as she can be. 

Slowly, by inches, Niamh begins to relax. 

Slowly, by inches, so does Naquela.

It's about a dozen sessions in when Naquela calls for a break, dropping onto her backside in the packed dirt and letting her blade drop from numb fingers.

Niamh watches her, tail switching.

"You've been practicing," she says after a moment. She drops into a crouch, forearms resting on her knees. "It shows."

Naquela snorts, rubbing her wrists. The numbness is fading, leaving a swollen ache in its wake. "Is that your backhanded way of telling me I'm improving?"

She grins and flicks a pebble in the charr's direction. Niamh tilts her head a fraction of an inch to one side to let it go sailing past.

"I'm reserving judgment on that," she replies, then levers to her feet, clasping her paws behind her head as she arches into a lazy stretch. "Get up, we're not done yet."

"Aw, c'mon, Niamh," Naquela groans. "I have blisters on my blisters!"

The charr glances over her shoulder, lips peeling back in what's unmistakeably a grin. "Good. When they're calluses, we'll know you're making progress."

Naquela flops back in the dirt and makes a sound very much like a gurgle.

\--

They keep moving up the battle line, relief to posts who move on to relieve other posts. Naquela sees the others limp by in the other direction, columns going back toward safer territory -- as safe as territory gets. Blood and bandages and weary, weary steps.

The Blood Legion soldiers get restless the closer they get to real action, and Naquela's lessons move safely away from the threat of restive brawling -- the flash of dirty teeth and dirtier claws.

The land's changing. 

The real fight isn't with Flame Legion, Naquela finds out. The real fight is out on the Brand.

The name brings a sick swoop to her stomach. 

The Brand. The dragon. Everything she'd ever hoped to avoid.

She concentrates on learning guns, learning swords, learning to dance and dodge and run. 

By inches -- millimeters, maybe -- she improves.

\--

Practice is sunny today -- sort of sunny, with boiling clouds and ripples of purple aurora blotting out the sky to the north. Naquela doesn't spend a lot of time looking north these days.

She glances that direction now, though, meditating on it silently as she sets her sword away. She waits until dread starts pouring, molten, into her guts before she lowers her eyes, just in time to see Niamh sidestep a pair of soldiers butting horns in the prelude to a brawl.

"Hey, Niamh!" she calls.

The charr's ears prick in her direction.

"C'mere," she says. "I wanna show you something."

Her ears prick higher. Her gaze casts briefly away, returning more quickly than it might have weeks before.

Naquela starts to trot away, waving absently over her shoulder.

Niamh follows.

The place they go is secret, secret. A Naquela-only zone in the midst of the charr war camp, blocked off by walls and war machines. Ruger's the only other person who knows about it, and Niamh at least has an easier time squeezing between the machines than he did.

Naquela trots ahead -- she’s already ahead, really -- as Niamh wiggles free of the gap, and her arms spread wide in fanfare, reaching up to whip an imaginary curtain aside.

“Ta-da!”

She waggles her fingers in an entirely unnecessary way and steps aside in a backward hop, skip, jump. 

The thing she ‘unveils’ was visible from the start, but Niamh is still staring at it, head cocked. Her ears prick forward, then droop ever so slightly.

“What is it?”

“It’s! Um, it’s a vehicle,” Naquela says, not at all crestfallen by this lack of immediate recognition. “Lookit, heavy tires -- the good ones, you know? -- and armoring on the periphery. And there’s room to mount a weapon if you wanted, but I think I like it better just for transport. Um, not that it’d transport much, I guess.”

She’s babbling again, she can’t help it. The motorcycle -- that’s sort of what it is, by and large -- is the stuff of love and care and precious free time, as well as scrap and spare bits filched -- with permission! -- from the yard. The tires are huge, the frame that binds them like filigree stretched between with space for the human to sit.

Niamh sidles closer, reaching out a paw to touch the wheels, then slowly trace backward over the still-skeletal frame. 

“You built this?” she asks. “Alone?”

“Yep.” Naquela rocks back on her heels. “It’s really pretty sturdy,” she adds. 

She squeezes the frame with one hand, beaming smile fading just a little bit.

“It doesn’t run, though.”

“Why not?” 

The charr is still investigating, circling the machine with slow, lazy switches of her tail. Naquela watches her, then sets her foot against the earth and swings herself into the motorcycle’s tall seat.

“Ah, you know. I built it out of what we could spare from repairs and stuff -- had to promise if we needed something I’d give it back.” She lounges forward, folding her arms over the bent pipes that form the handlebars. “It doesn’t even have an engine in it. We can never spare engines.”

She grins as Niamh reappears at her left elbow, ears still pricked.

“Best I can do is sit here and make noises.” 

She demonstrates with a bubbling “vrrm vrrm” and the charr snorts.

“But it rolls?”

“Um … probably.”

Niamh makes a noise, somewhere between a grunt and a sigh, and vanishes out of Naquela’s peripheral vision. When she turns to check, she sees the charr grip the bike’s slender frame and brace against it.

Her mouth opens, but she snaps it shut before anything can come out.

The charr heaves against the bike’s weight, grunts once, then heaves again. 

It moves. 

An inch, then another.

Niamh’s claws dig furrows into the dirt. Her muscles twitch and strain. But then it’s rolling, really rolling, and Naquela starts to laugh, and she sets her hands to the makeshift handlebars to guide the bike away from her workspace.

She whoops a little as they pick up speed, if not as fast as the bike _could_ go, at least faster than she ever thought it _would_.

It’s probably for the best that no one happens by to see Niamh pushing Naquela in slow circles around a patch of dirt, rumbling engine noises while the human shrieks with laughter.

\--

“So what do you do in your spare time?”

Niamh grunts. “Not much.”

“Oh, come on, Niamh,” the human says. “Everybody’s got a hobby.”

It takes weeks, but Niamh does show her the small collection of gemstones and worked metal she keeps tucked amongst her gear, safely camouflaged by whetstones and oiled cloths.

What would only garner mockery from her fellows is regarded with interest, maybe even admiration.

The human asks for a bracelet.

The charr promises her one.

\--

It’s late, late one night when Naquela slinks from her bunk and weasels out past the lines of the camp to a lonely hill.

They’ve moved forward and moved forward again, practically at the front lines, and now and then the dragon’s shadow wings over them like thunder.

She’s seen enough of the charr lands, of old Ascalon, for it to be familiar, if nothing like the rolling farms and fields of the dale. At least there was the dome of blue above, light or dark, sunny or spangled.

But out here, near the Brand, not even the sky looks like home.

She sits down hard on dirt-brushed stone, ignoring the spiky formation of crackling purple that juts out to her left, and she leans back. The sky swells into her vision, all cloud and haze and ropes of light and darkness.

A pang stabs at her belly, working its way up to an ache in her chest, and she makes a noise like disgust.

“Now you’re getting homesick?” she demands, and she flings her arm across her eyes to block the view.

She’s like that for maybe an hour before she hears footsteps shuffle up the rock, claws scraping as their owner stops beside her.

“Hi, Niamh.”

The charr rumbles.

She’s gone weeks, now and then, without seeing Niamh. Now that there’s fighting to do, she and the rest of the Blood Legion troops traveling with them have been out in it. Ruger grumbles about it. They’re supposed to be guarding the support posts specifically. But apparently these are desperate times.

Naquela watches for them. Because sometimes they come back fewer, and sometimes they come back hurt.

Niamh -- the one time it happens to be her -- puts up with her fussing with saintly patience right up until she sets her chin on top of Naquela's head and rumbles, "Hush." Naquela fusses silently afterward.

They've been home -- " _home_ " -- two weeks now, so they're probably due another outing.

“Stargazing?” the charr says.

“Yes. That.”

She lowers her arm, smiles up at the charr, but the expression goes crooked on its way out, and after a moment she gives up.

“Just thinking,” she says, hands dropping onto her belly, where her fingers begin to drum a slow, steady beat.

Niamh hunkers down, then settles her backside onto the rock, legs stretching awkwardly out in front of her. She doesn’t say anything, not at first. Her gaze follows Naquela’s skyward.

The silence stretches, goes thin.

"Why are you here, Naquela?" she asks at last, gaze dropping from the starless sky.

The human's mouth curves, but she stops in the midst of thinking up a clever reply. She doesn't meet Niamh's gaze.

Her mouth opens, shuts, opens again only to close once more. She doesn't answer for so long even she's not sure she's going to.

"That fire -- the one that killed my parents -- it wasn't an accident." 

The words hang heavy for a moment, pushed out unwilling by the ones that follow. 

"They were soldiers. Decorated. Lots of work cleaning up the slums, I guess?" Naquela shifts, almost squirms. "Really popular in the rank and file. In the city. In the slums. But, um, also really unpopular in the slums."

Niamh's ears flutter, and so do Naquela's hands. 

"Anyway," she says quickly. "Anyway. Long story short, a lot of people had, um, a lot of high expectations of me that I didn't have any intention of meeting."

Her fingers stop drumming and fiddle with the fastenings of her shirt. Her expression makes a twist of her lips.

"Got a lot of visits from the knights when I was a kiddle in the orphanage. My parents' commander just about pitched a fit when I apprenticed to an old guy on the market square." She sighs, and her hands drift apart, settling on the stone to slowly push her upright. "All I ever wanted was to make things. Put things together. Take 'em apart. Find out how they work. All anybody else wanted was to see me be my parents."

She arches into a long stretch, plastering the falsest smile she's ever manufactured onto her face.

"So I ran away."

Niamh considers her story in silence. Her tail swishes over dirt and rock in slow, easy swings. She offers no comfort -- she has no platitudes to give. Instead, after several moments, she speaks.

"This is my final assignment. My last chance," she says. Her gaze goes distant, her voice toneless. "Any more ... mistakes, and I'll be dishonorably discharged. Sent into Gladium Canton."

"Oh," Naquela says after a moment, then, more slowly, "Oh ..."

The charr doesn't say anything. 

Naquela stares at her lap.

"Have you ever thought about," she says after a moment, before her mind can even make a struggling effort at catching up with her mouth, "um, I mean, quitting?"

Niamh goes dead still, and her gaze lurches up in time to see the charr lift her chin, sharp, and growl low in her throat.

"No -- no -- I mean --" Her hands lift, and one dashes back through her hair. "I don't mean _desert_ , Niamh, geez."

The rumble peters out, but there's still tension in every line of her body. Her ears twitch once, at attention.

"Just ... you know, once your group's on R&R, just ... resign or something." She peers doubtfully at the charr. "You guys can resign ... right?"

Niamh only grunts. Not much of an answer, but her gaze is turned inward, and -- listening or not -- Naquela plows on.

"I mean, it's not like -- you _like_ this. It's not like it's what you want to do." She hesitates. "I know it's not. And I know ... they're not exactly friends to you. Not exactly comrades."

A ripple runs through Niamh, and the human half reaches out, then withdraws her hand.

"Don't you think it'd be better for you -- to be able to do what you like? To maybe even make a living at it. To go and to do and to -- be with people who aren't --" She fumbles. "-- like them. Even if you were a --" 

She can't quite bring herself to say 'gladium.' It's probably better that she doesn't. Niamh is coiled up tight. Her gaze is nowhere. Her claws flex out, then in.

_In for a penny_ , Naquela thinks.

"Think about it," she says quietly. "I mean, would it be the worst thing?"

She looks at Niamh, and for a split second the charr's gaze says _YES_ in a silent shout. Then it softens. She looks away. Naquela stares at her lap again.

There's a deathly hush over the crackling stones, but after a moment -- a long one -- the charr says, low and soft, "Maybe not."


End file.
